Marketing NEWS

Notre Dame alum named chairman of national children’s charity

Michael J. Vogel is a 1965 graduate of the University of Notre Dame

Senior Executive of $1 billion+ ACCO World, an Operating Company of Fortune Brands, Inc. and former president of Day-Timers to Take Helm of Century-old KidsPeace

A Notre Dame graduate and senior U.S. business leader with a history of helping businesses become more successful is turning his hand to doing good for the millions of kids helped by one of America’s premier children’s charities.

Notre Dame’s (Class of 1965) Michael J. Vogel, who grew up in South Bend and is executive vice president of ACCO North America, and the former president of Day-Timers, has been named by a nationwide board of child advocates and philanthropists to serve as chairman of the 123-year-old national children’s crisis charity KidsPeace.

Mr. Vogel, who has previously served as a member of the KidsPeace board, will provide leadership and direction for the charity, which has more than 50 centers nationwide. KidsPeace gives hope, help, and healing to literally millions of children struggling to overcome crises such as traumas, depression, family problems, and the stresses of modern life. KidsPeace helps thousands of children a day nationwide through programs such as intensive foster care, residential campuses for kids overcoming crisis, and the KidsPeace Children’s Hospital, a national resource based in Orefield, Pennsylvania. Millions more children and families are helped each year through award-winning national and international prevention campaigns.

“I have a deep belief that all children deserve and have a right to be happy, grow up and be given a chance to be successful,” says Mr. Vogel. “KidsPeace helps kids who need help and haven’t found it elsewhere.”

The new chairman’s preliminary areas of focus will be to give the best to kids who have been through the worst, to build an endowment for the century-old organization that last year provided some $10 million in free and undercompensated care for kids in severe crisis, to hold and attract the best people, to have all staff find KidsPeace a great place to work, and to continue reaching out to children and families nationwide as a source of prevention and crisis avoidance information. “KidsPeace reaches millions of people each year through its family- and teen-help websites, and many millions more through media outreach and prevention materials,” says Vogel. “I want KidsPeace to be the nation’s – and perhaps the world’s – key source of knowledge to help kids and parents avoid and overcome the kinds of crises that can strike any child.”

On the personal front, Mr. Vogel is married to his “best friend” Gail for 40 years, and they have two children and two grandchildren. He enjoys reading and is an enthusiastic and active alumnus of Notre Dame University and its business school.

“For over a century KidsPeace has been working tirelessly to help children and has grown into a national leader in our field,” said KidsPeace President & CEO C.T. O’Donnell II. “To take our message of hope, help, and healing to every child in America, we need leaders of a national caliber. Mike Vogel has the passion, the integrity, and the national business leadership skills to help take KidsPeace’s charitable works to more children and more communities in need and make a difference in all our lives. The children of KidsPeace and the children of America are very lucky to count Mike Vogel as a friend.”